Hope to Live to 100? Check Your Genes

By
Leah Ornstein

September 27, 2016

Though a maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle is crucial to living a long and prosperous life, a new study is saying that whether or not you make it to an extreme age like 95 or 100 may have more to do with genetics than anything else. The study looked at thousands of group of siblings and found that as milestones reached by one sibling increased (90, 95, 100, 105), the chances that the other would reach that same age, compared to the likelihood that a normal person would, increased exponentially. Though it finds a clear link between genetics and life expectancy—again, it is important to note that it was only focused on ‘extreme ages’ and that the average life expectancy in 2012 in the US was 78.74—it doesn’t negate previous studies that have linked life expectancy to such factors as socioeconomic status, race, obesity, diet, smoking and exercise... So just because your relatives are living to a ripe age, it doesn’t give you a free pass! Are there any centenarians in your family? How do other family older members' ages compare?